The disposal of hard paraffin wax collected from pipelines during cleaning and pigging has become increasingly difficult due to legal restrictions imposed by various governmental authorities, and the desire to minimize environmental damage. This problem of wax disposition is aggravated where the acceptable disposal of paraffin wax requires transport of the paraffin to a suitable landfill or storage facility located at a substantial distance from its point of initial collection. Moreover, recent legislation has lowered the acceptable threshold level of benzene in a hydrocarbon waste material, below which level such material can continue to be classified as an industrial waste (as opposed to a hazardous waste). Thus, the new maximum benzene concentration which will allow the material in which the benzene is contained to be classified as an industrial waste is 0.5 ppm.
Paraffin wax which is scraped from the interior of pipelines during the cleaning of the pipeline, using a pig or the like, is in the form of hydrocarbon-containing blocks or chunks of wax. In most instances, such recovered wax has a benzene level above the new maximum limit of 0.5 ppm, and therefore is now classified as a hazardous waste. By government regulations, the options available for environmentally acceptable disposition of a hazardous waste are fewer and are generally substantially more expensive than those which are available in the case of material classified as an industrial non-hazardous waste. In sum, the escalating costs of disposal, and heightened environmental sensitivity, provide significant impetus to the examination and identification of practical new alternative disposal procedures by which the wax can be disposed of in an environmentally acceptable way.
The method currently in use for disposing of relatively hard waste paraffin wax collected in the course of pipeline clean outs or the like is to simply collect it in a number of suitable containers (such as barrels) located at a suitable place. Here the paraffin will, under optimum conditions, be retained without leakage or loss so as to pollute or contaminate the environment. This is not a true solution to the problem of disposal, however, because the original possessor of the barrel-contained wax, confronted with the problem of disposition, now has continuing and unlimited exposure from the wax retained in the barrels.
It is to the end of providing a more acceptable alternative method of disposition of such waste paraffin wax that the present invention is directed. The method of the present invention undertakes to dispose of hard paraffin wax collected from the pipeline during the cleaning process and in an economically attractive way in that the wax is substantially entirely converted to useful product. The proposed method of wax disposition does not pose an environmental hazard. Considering that the wax, as it is pigged from a pipeline during cleaning, is unsuitable for re-use, reclamation or sale in the state in which it then exists, the method of this invention is therefore particularly attractive since it provides both a financial advantage, and it alleviates a severe environmental contamination concern.